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Posts from the ‘Technology/Digital Culture’ Category

Dec 10

10 Comments

Brave New (Online) World

There was this funny YouTube video last week. Somebody posted it on Facebook. Or tweeted it. Or something like that. It was very clever and witty and it got all kinds of likes and shares and tweets and re-tweets.It was one of many potentially entertaining diversions in the middle of a busy day. I laughed and moved on. I would link to the video so you could see for yourself, but I think I saw it over half a week ago, so it’s already ancient news. You’re already way behind. Read more

Nov 19

8 Comments

Trending

It’s been the usual quiet Monday morning routine of easing into a day off with a pot of coffee and a tour through a handful of blogs and news sites. But for whatever reason, today is a day when I have been struck by the uncomfortable absurdity of life in the digital age. Across the top of one major newspaper’s site is a large red arrow with an ever-rotating banner that informs me of what is “Trending” today. Conveniently arrayed for me are the stories and photo galleries and surveys and videos and articles that are being the most greedily devoured by the denizens of the twenty-first century with our insatiable appetites, always in search of the next interesting cyber-morsel to pin or share or tweet. This is what the cool kids are looking at today and, presumably, this is what I should be interested in and clicking on as well. Read more

Aug 23

17 Comments

The Movies

Our kids are at summer camp this week which means that for the past four nights my wife and I have had been faced with the glorious burden of determining what to do with a free evening. It has not been a particularly onerous burden. Casual nights out, leisurely walks, eating supper whenever we want, sleeping in a bit longer than usual, not having to clean up the house nearly as often—it’s been lovely. Of course we miss the kids terribly and can’t wait for them to come home and all that, but still. It’s been great. Read more

Jan 27

3 Comments

Doodles

I always enjoy Kim Fabricius’s theological “doodlings” over at Faith and Theology. He’s got a real talent for coming up with short, punchy, provocative statements that are invariably theologically insightful and interesting, and amusing to boot!

Today’s post is well worth a quick visit.  Here are a few of my favourites: Read more

Jan 12

3 Comments

Freedom From Ourselves

I’ve come across this in a number of places this week… Apparently, you can now purchase software to force yourself off the internet. Freedom is a program designed to keep you offline for up to eight hours at a time, freeing you up to be creative, productive, on task, and healthy and happy to boot, no doubt. Technology to save us from technology. Just what we need. Read more

Nov 12

9 Comments

Reading and the Encroaching Buzz

Last night, I finished a book. Not a particularly momentous occasion, you might think—and certainly not worth celebrating online. But it was significant to me for the simple reason that  I haven’t been doing much of this lately. Finishing books, that is. I’m very good at starting books—I must have fifteen or so on the go at any given moment—but lately I’ve noticed that making it to the last page is an increasingly rare occurrence. Read more

Oct 17

3 Comments

500

Mondays are my Sabbath day, and they represent a chance to relax, do some recreational reading, tidy up some loose ends around the house, and often spend some time blogging.  Today, as I was reading some comments, I noticed on my dashboard that my most recent post was number 500 in the history of this blog!  I don’t post nearly as frequently as many bloggers do, but 500 still seems like a lot to me!  It’s hard to believe that I’ve been doing this for that long. Read more

Oct 6

17 Comments

Death is Calling (But What is it Saying?)

Like most people, I was saddened to hear of Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ passing yesterday. I am certainly no technophile (although I do love my MacBook) and my knowledge of the world in which Mr. Jobs was so influential is minimal, to put it mildly. Nevertheless, based on the little I do know, I marvel at the impact this man and the company he founded have had upon how we live in the modern world. It seemed like Jobs was not only a visionary leader but a genuinely decent human being.  Not a bad combination. Read more

Sep 21

8 Comments

“We Are Distracting Ourselves Into Spiritual Oblivion”

I’m in the midst of a very busy stretch right now, so there’s not a lot of time for original posts. This morning, however, in the midst of my busyness, I came across a few prescient quotes from Ronald Rolheiser’s The Holy Longing on the struggles we often have with paying attention to and nourishing our spiritual lives. Rolheiser identifies three main things that work against what he calls a sense of “interiority,” and all three seem to pretty  much hit the nail on the head: narcissism, pragmatism, and unbridled restlessness. Here’s a bit of what I read prior to heading out into another busy (!) day: Read more

Sep 8

2 Comments

Good Words

Blogging can be a bit of a strange animal in that you hurl your words out into the wide (and wild) world of the web, where they can be read (or not) by a virtually limitless variety of people who come to them from a virtually limitless assortment of links, searches, recommendations, “likes,” etc.  Of course, on one level this is no different from the publishing of books and articles.  But the sheer volume of words out there in cyberspace makes it easy to imagine one’s own words just getting lost in the noise and clutter of the online world. Read more

Aug 26

19 Comments

Something Has Happened… Now Listen to Me!!

Here in Canada, the news of the week has been dominated by the tragic death of NDP leader Jack Layton.  It’s been remarkable to see the outpouring of grief, the pages of commentary, the rapturous eulogizing, and, regrettably, the vicious politicizing that has come in the wake of Mr. Layton’s passing.  National Post columnist Christie Blatchford’s ill-timed and rather insensitive article in Monday’s issue, and the stream of vitriolic commets that followed it, stand as a rather embarrassing indictment of our inability to behave and converse civilly and sensitively online, even in the face of death.  Read more

Apr 16

29 Comments

State of Nature

This morning, I noticed with interest that Holy Post, the National Post‘s religion blog, has decided to disable comments on their posts for a while due to the bad behaviour of commenters (curiously, comments are allowed on the post announcing that comments will no longer be allowed!). Read more

Mar 21

23 Comments

On Blogging

Over the last few weeks I have noticed a feeling of unsettledness and mild disorientation as I begin my morning ritual of coffee and a trip through my news reader/aggregator. At last count, I have over 130 subscriptions to various blogs and news sites, some of which are (incredibly) updated 3-4 times daily. I have no idea if this is a “normal” amount of information for the technologically-savvy to wade through on a daily basis in our brave new cyber-world, but the sheer volume of words I make some attempt, however minimal, to regularly keep up with is proving increasingly unwieldy. Read more

Nov 23

2 Comments

Future Legend

I spent a chunk of my day off yesterday in a dingy little tire shop waiting for winter tires with hordes of other Vancouver Islanders caught unprepared for our recent blast of winter. I passed the time, in part, by finishing off  Douglas Coupland’s Player One: What is to Become of Us, a novel/lecture series characterized by Coupland’s customary mixture of bleakness, humour, and though-provoking storytelling around questions about the meaning of life and what it means to be human. Read more

Oct 21

3 Comments

Really?

Received this via a co-worker today.  Hilarious commercial.  Baffling message.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight.  In order to save myself from obsessing over the mind-numbing amount and variety of trivial minutiae pouring out of my phone, and from all the addictive tendencies and relationship-destroying habits that these pieces of technology cultivate and capitalize upon, I should… get a different phone?!

Um… OK.

Sep 3

23 Comments

Faith, Technology, and The Suburbs

A couple of loosely connected thought, links, and quotes for a Friday morning…

A few weeks ago, I came across an excellent new collaborative blog called Wondering Fair (a number of contributors are alumni from Regent College).  Interesting and engaging topics, good writing, nice accessible look and feel… definitely worth adding to your reader.  Due to my ongoing interest in how technology shapes us as human beings, I was particularly drawn to David Benson’s post on why he doesn’t own a mobile phone.  His summary hits the nail on the head, in my view: Read more

Aug 25

8 Comments

Informationism

A lot of my reading for this week’s sermon has been focused on Sabbath—how to keep it, why it ought to be kept, what prevents us from keeping it, etc.  Whatever else a consistent and deliberate observation of Sabbath might protect us from, I think that our societal addiction/enslavement to technology would be high on the list.  A couple of articles I’ve come across over the last few days from the New York Times’s “Your Brain on Computers” series (see here and here, for example) have simply reinforced my sense that one of the things that the inhabitant of twenty-first century postmodernity is most desperately in need of is unplugging. Read more

Aug 12

1 Comment

Notes to Self

Some of the bigger blogs I subscribe to typically have something like a weekend round-up type post which serves as an aggregator of the miscellaneous articles, video clips, and other assorted cyber-scraps that the author(s) happen to have come across over the course of the past week.  I don’t usually spend much time on these posts because there are just too many links and rabbit trails and I can’t be bothered.  I have occasionally found the odd gem in these laundry lists of links, but I’m increasingly finding that I just don’t have the patience for the random nature of these posts. Read more

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